


Hey Remember That Time

by dustyfluorescent



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Implied Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:43:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustyfluorescent/pseuds/dustyfluorescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with a human tooth and ends in a hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hey Remember That Time

**Author's Note:**

> I was taking a break from editing my nano and listening to Regina Spektor and then I started writing a fic and then I didn't stop until I was done. This started out as a series of unrelated drabbles until they became less unrelated, and now it's a series of drabbles that are sort of related and there's kind of a plot there as well. Quick, dirty, unbetaed. 
> 
> Based on [That Time](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05MRbZvzFsw) by Regina Spektor. If you haven't heard it before listen to it now. You'll want to.

_a human tooth_

It’s an ordinary afternoon of faffing about as per usual, late spring or early summer, and they’re together as always. Merlin throws away his cigarette butt and then suddenly crouches down, frowning. Arthur nearly trips over him. 

“What’s up?”

Merlin picks something off the street and looks up at Arthur with a smile on his face.

“It’s a human tooth.”

“Don’t be stupid, _Mer_ lin, of course it’s not.”

Merlin holds the tooth between his fingers, twirls it around, licks it - and God if that isn’t the most _disgusting_ thing - and smiles brightly.

“It’s definitely a human tooth,” Merlin says. “Wow, this is such an awesome day.”

Arthur lets out a supposedly irritated huff and turns away so that Merlin can’t see he’s actually smiling. 

“You’re not kissing me with that mouth.”

Merlin isn’t listening. He’s too busy storing the tooth in his now empty box of Parliaments.

_kissing anywhere except the mouth_

“This was a great idea,” Merlin murmurs against the pillow. He sounds slightly out of breath. 

Arthur groans and presses a kiss below Merlin’s tailbone, working his fingers deeper into Merlin’s arse, rutting against the mattress. He can’t find it in himself to disagree with Merlin, although he fucking loves kissing him on the mouth, slowly, deeply, filthily, just kissing and nothing else and okay, maybe something else at some point but it’s just so - Anyway. This is pretty good too. Especially with the bloody tooth licking.

“Maybe get your dick in my arse sometime soon?” Merlin murmurs, and he still sounds so goddamn cheeky that a part of Arthur really just wants to _show him_ , but then again he _is_ making an offer Arthur simply cannot refuse.

He is quite enjoying leisurely fingering Merlin open as the stuffy air around them dances in the noonday sun, but then he thinks about fucking Merlin while sucking on his neck, licking the shells of his ears, slowly, slowly, and he decides that maybe he’s ready to move now after all. 

_pink and green_

“Please tell me you did not fuck in my bed,” Lance groans, but the evidence is there - Merlin and Arthur are definitely in his bed right now, naked as the day they were born, wrapped around each other and tangled in his sheets, sweaty and covered in come.

“Um, we did not fuck on your bed?” Merlin offers. Arthur laughs and kisses his cheek (because he’s still kind of grossed out by the whole tooth licking business, and also maybe a little bit because he really likes Merlin’s cheekbones a lot). 

“I’m very supportive and all, lads, it’s just that - oh for fuck’s sake, can you please just _get out_.”

Merlin jumps out of the bed stark naked with Arthur hot on his heels. He stops in the doorway, smiling cheekily at Lance, and lights up a cigarette. Marlboros. He’s going through a phase.

“Just tell me one thing,” Merlin says. “Why are your sheets pink and green?”

“I don’t actually even care,” Arthur quips. “Merlin looks really fucking hot in pink and green.”

Merlin swats Arthur on the arse, Arthur squeals like a little girl, and they run away giggling and screaming. Lance makes a mental note to lock his door from now on. 

_boxes of tangerines_

“Why are you eating tangerines?” Arthur asks, and kisses Merlin on the cheek. “I thought you were only eating pink and green foods.”

“Well, I got bored of that when they didn’t have any watermelons left. I bought tangerines instead. I thought that could be my new thing. Try one, they’re so juicy!”

Arthur smiles, and takes a slice. It is juicy. He kisses Merlin, and he tastes like tangerines do, amazing and sweet and like home. 

“It’s amazing,” Merlin mutters. “They’re so cheap, too. I don’t want to eat anything else.”

And he doesn’t eat anything else, not for a month, not until he ends up in the hospital because that’s what happens when you think you can live on cheap and juicy forever.

_Shakespeare_

Merlin spends two weeks in the hospital, and during that time he reads eight Shakespeare plays. Arthur comes to see him, even brings him Camels because it’s a special occasion, but Merlin doesn’t care. He doesn’t really talk, and he doesn’t smoke at all (which obviously makes the doctors very happy, but Arthur is actually a bit worried). He just reads, even when Arthur is there, and sometimes quotes Shakespeare. His skin is pale and sort of fluorescent. His eyes are dark and deep and somehow make him look like something is chasing him. His cheekbones are more prominent than ever, and for once Arthur finds himself not liking how that looks at all. 

“Merlin, you have to talk to me,” he says over and over again.

“In time we hate that which we often fear.” It’s like he’s not even there.

“Look at me!”

“How well he's read, to reason against reading!”

“I feel like I’m losing you,” Arthur whispers. “I feel like you’re slipping away from me, like you don’t even want to try, like you don’t care anymore, and it scares me. Please don’t do this to me. I love you. Please don’t walk away from me. Please don’t shut me out. I can’t handle that.”

For a moment Merlin stares back at him, eyes empty. Then he picks up his book and starts reading out loud where he left off. 

“Is this a dagger which I see before me,  
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.  
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still -”

Arthur walks out because there’s only so much he can take.

_backs of cereal boxes_

When Merlin comes back home from the hospital, Arthur hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s a bit paler and a bit skinnier than he used to be, though, because he’s been doing a lot more of some things he only rarely did before, and it’s strange how you get addicted to other things when you don’t get what you want the most. But Merlin needs Arthur now, and he’s there for him. 

Merlin doesn’t notice anything is wrong. He sits down at the kitchen table staring at the back of a cereal box until his choco pops and milk turn into disgusting mush. 

“Are you okay?” Arthur asks. Merlin smiles and shrugs and lights up a Camel and fucks Arthur hard over the kitchen table. 

He never reads Shakespeare again, but he never really forgets Macbeth.

_pigeon with a broken wing_

Merlin sees a wounded bird. He tries to catch it - _I wanna help him, maybe I can take care of him_ \- but it bites his finger, lunges away, its other wing dragging the ground in a way that doesn’t look natural at all. 

“He’s scared,” Merlin says.

“He can’t fly.”

“No.”

And then a street cat jumps the bird that can’t fly away and rips it to pieces right there in front of them, and Merlin makes a sound like someone’s stabbed him. The scream scares the cat away but the bird is dead now anyway. Arthur wraps his arms around Merlin, lets him bury his face in the crook of his neck, strokes his hair, tries to find words but can’t. _He was a good bird_. 

“I want to bury him,” Merlin says after a while, when they’re both staring at the bloody, messy remains of the bird. He looks like even the thought might be enough to make him sick.

Arthur doesn’t say no. He knows Merlin feels obliged. 

_when you OD’ed_

Merlin stands outside the hospital, hands shaking. He doesn’t have any cigarettes, he’s completely broke, but he keeps bumming fag after fag from people passing by or coming out for a smoke. He smokes ten cigarettes in a row but he still can’t breathe, his hands still don’t stop shaking. He drinks coffee and he’s high and it makes him want to throw up because this is not a good moment to be high because just a few hours ago they were fucking and then decided to get high because Arthur had some new shit he wanted to try out and now Arthur might be dying, Arthur might be dying, Arthur might be dead

He gets back in where the nurses can find him and switches from fags to shite coffee he can’t even taste.

_when you OD’ed for the second time_

Merlin sits in the waiting room and his head is spinning and he can’t stop drinking coffee. He’s hoping it might distract him from the gripping horror in his chest because _I’m not actually sure if this is déjà vu or if we’ve actually been here before_ or the way he feels like he’s Arthur, and if that’s actually true Arthur’s mind is a freaky place to be. He’s on a lot of shit. He’s not sure what most of it is. _Cardiac arrest_.

He thinks about how funny it would be if Arthur would die with some of his come still leaking out of Merlin’s ass, drying on the backs of his thighs, and when the nurse comes back to talk to him he can’t breathe because he’s laughing so hard.

**Author's Note:**

> Shakespeare quotes are from _Antony and Cleopatra_ , _Love's Labour's Lost_ , and _Macbeth_ , respectively.


End file.
